The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide

The Banality of Denial examines the attitudes of the State of Israel and its leading institutions toward the Armenian Genocide. Israel's view of this issue has special significance and deserves an attentive study, as it is a country composed of a people who were victims of the Holocaust. The Banality of Denial seeks both to examine the passive, indifferent Israeli attitude towards the Armenian Genocide, and to explore active Israeli measures to undermine attempts at safeguarding the memory of the Armenian victims of the Turkish persecution.

Such an inquiry into attempts at denial by Israeli institutions and leading figures of Israel's political, security, academic, and Holocaust "memory-preservation" elite has not merely an academic significance. It has considerable political relevance, both symbolic and tangible.

In The Banality of Denial--as in Auron's previous work--moral, philosophical, and theoretical questions are of paramount importance. Because no previous studies have dealt with these issues or similar ones, an original methodology is employed to analyze the subject with regard to four domains: political, educational, media, and academic.

Om forfatteren (2003)

Yair Auron is professor at the Open University of Israel. He is the author of numerous articles that have appeared in Jewish Political Studies Review, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Contemporary Jewry . In addition he is the author of many books on genocide and contemporary Judaism, including A Perfect Injustice: Genocide and Theft of Armenian Wealth, The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide, and The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide .